Presentation short abstract

This contribution explores the role of monitoring evaluation and learning in the production of knowledge about adaptation finance. It reveals how the Green Climate Fund’s results framework extends the Fund’s authority via promissory knowledge claims which in turn sustain the Paris climate regime.

Presentation long abstract

Whilst the allocation and quantity of climate adaptation finance are widely scrutinized, less attention is paid to the role of this money in broader climate politics. I ask how the Green Climate Fund (GCF), orchestrates inputs via its results management framework, how this knowledge is processed and then used strategically by the Fund Secretariat. Critical scholarship draws attention to how monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) shapes how adaptation projects are designed and implemented and the type of knowledge produced about impact. I build on this by combining thinking from science and technology studies about knowledge production with Foucauldian ideas about how knowledge is used in governance. I show how the GCF results management framework monitors and manages implementation to make diverse and disparate information about projects into a coherent and commensurate portfolio. I demonstrate how the Fund’s results processes incentivise projects to be designed for approval, rather than implementation, and how this has conditioned consultants to mirror the Fund’s requirements, rather than responding to vulnerability and adaptation need. My results demonstrate how the GCF Secretariat gains credibility and political authority via promissory claims about its results, whilst cautioning about the risk of a legitimacy crisis should these be discredited. This work makes a theoretical contribution about how MEL underlies powerful claims about adaptation. This facilitates strategic communication by the GCF about its achievements. At the same time, this contribution makes visible the deontological attitude of adaptation finance and the important role of this in the governance of climate change.